Esc Flashing

[Gaza07]

I have now flashed all of my RcTimer esc';s using the SimonK firmware and the tool I made shown in the picture below,
you can find all the info you might need about esc flashing here http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1513678

you can use the KK multicopter flashtool for flashing esc';s it can be found here
http://lazyzero.de/en/modellbau/kkmulticopterflashtool


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[MadMax]

Thats a nice looking tool you made there Gaza07, are those pins sprung ?

[Gaza07]

Yea they are sprung they refer to them as pogo pins, they had to be ordered from the states via Ebay,
it makes flashing an Rctimer esc very quick ad you only need to remove a small piece of covering to do them 

[MadMax]

I cant seem to find the right pins on Ebay they all seem to have different ends than yours, how did you put it all together or do they make a holder for the pins like yours  8)

[Gaza07]

Ive had a look and i cant find them either looks like they have all gone and I dont have any spare sorry 
I soldered the wires to the pins and then stuck them to a small piece of 3mm ply wood with hot glue, I then applied a lod more hot glue to the top of that and presses another piece of ply on to that, making a ply wood sandwich with the pins and hot glue in the middle,
I then use my dremmel with a sanding drum and sanded it to shape and all the excess wood off, I then covered it with black heat shrink, the hardest job was to keep all the pins in the right place, although I found out after that they could be moved about a bit if heated with a soldering iron to melt the glue around the pin allowing it to be re-positioned, I didnt take any pictures but I do have one that didnt work and may redo it and take pics then 

[teslahed]

In order to flash my speed controllers i soldered short lengths of stiff single core wire to longer lengths of flex cable which i soldered to my USB interface device. The flex cable adds strain relief so i don't snap the solder pads off the speed controller if i accidentally nudge it.

I tinned the pads first with the soldering iron then used the iron to heat the stiff single core wire which i used like a thinner soldering iron tip to solder to the pads rather than using the soldering iron directly which i found too difficult.

[Gaza07]

My first ones where flashed by soldering to them but I got fed up with all the messing about that's why I made the pogo pin thing,
I use an antex 18w soldering iron that has a very fine point it does the job well but isn't much use for fitting things like xt60's,
It looks like you lost a pad there and had to connect direct to the mcu is the resistor the same as would be in line if going through the pad

[Mslater]

As yet I've not felt the need to flash any ESC's. I've yet to have someone tell me it makes a big difference.

So I'm running tunigy plush at 490hz, is it really going to benefit a change to eliminate the low pass filter ?

[teslahed]

As yet I've not felt the need to flash any ESC's. I've yet to have someone tell me it makes a big difference.

So I'm running tunigy plush at 490hz, is it really going to benefit a change to eliminate the low pass filter ?

Flashing my rctimer speed controllers made a big difference to the performance of my quadcopter - to the point that i wouldn't bother building one without first flashing the speed controllers for it now that I've seen the difference. PID tuning made more of a difference after i had the speed controllers flashed and i was able to get the quadcopter flying with more stability and control.

I don't know much about your particular speed controllers though.

[teslahed]

It looks like you lost a pad there and had to connect direct to the mcu is the resistor the same as would be in line if going through the pad

I did lose a pad - just the one but getting that speed controller flashed was a bit of a pain!

I wasn't actually using the resistor for anything except it's leg. I used the thin wire of the  leg of the resistor as a point to solder to the chip - i didn't touch the chip directly with the iron but rather used the resistor leg heated by the iron instead. I tinned the leg first with solder and it just about stuck once heated and applied to the correct pin on the mcu. I didn't breath much whilst it was flashing.

[Gaza07]

I'm the same as teslahed flashing my rctimer esc's made a huge difference and I also wouldn't use them now with out flashing first, I have never had any of the plush range so cant say if it makes a big difference or not, but I have read quite a few comments about people flashing the plush range and it making a big difference to them,

From what Ive been reading there are better options than the rctimer or plush esc,s which both have an internal clock
the HK F-20a and F-30a have an external oscillator (clock) and don't suffer temperature drift like the versions with a internal clock can, also the F-20a and F-30a from what Ive read can be flashed using the turnigy usb linker and no need to remove any covering, iam currently reading up on this and will create a thread later unless some one already knows and wants to start one

[MadMax]

Thats interesting also dont know if you know but HK have the F-30a escs at the UK warehouse and very cheap to 

[Gaza07]

Yea ive seen them but funds wont stretch to a set of those at the moment but I will get some when funds allow 

[teslahed]

I just flashed some more ESCs - 10 amp Hobbykings this time;



Unfortunately the pads were particularly small so i couldn';t use the handy flash tool - i had to solder to the pads then hold my breath whilst loading the new firmware (wasn';t easy)

[Gaza07]

It makes it a bit of a bind when you have to solder them all it might be worth getting some of those cheap clip connectors that were kicking about to do the ones the pogo tool wot do